Silent Films (pt. III)

A Page of Madness

The Passion of Joan of Arc

Konnichiwa and bonjour, my terrifically taciturn readers. It’s been a wild few weeks for humanity, and for this blog. And with all of the representation of familial horror, nunsploitation, bleak taboos, and beloved celebrity deaths, I felt that my cinematic diet needed a detox. So this week we’re exploring another‍ ‍round of silent films, to further educate ourselves in cinema history, and to restore a bit of class to this low-brow movie blog. 99% of the time, I’m having a blast while watching and reviewing these films every week, but its themes like this one that really make my blog feel like self-inflicted film school. That being said, thus far I have been very surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed the silent films I’ve chosen, and the history I’ve learned in my research of them. My curiosity for this era of film was first piqued when I watched the German horror classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligary, and much to my surprise, the majority of other silent films I’ve viewed have also included plenty of horror elements, whether or not this was intentional. Maybe it’s the drastic contrast of black and white, the hyper-exaggerated expressions, or the eerie lack of voices heard, but silent films are all pretty creepy to this critic. But, of course, I say this as a compliment, because nothing holds my short attention span in one place quite like a good, old-fashioned, unpredictable horror film. The history of filmmaking in the silent era is just endlessly fascinating, too, due to the frequent on-set hazards and experimentation of this new art form, the fact that a great deal of the earliest moving pictures ever made are considered to be either lost or destroyed due to the use of highly flammable and unstable nitrate film, and also due to the fact that many films were intentionally destroyed by studios for wholesale junking. There was no thought of ever saving these films, they simply needed vault space and the materials were expensive to house, plus studios could earn money by recycling the films for their silver content. It’s been estimated that around 75% of silent films produced in the US are lost, though we’ll never know the exact amount. This is why film preservation is so important, why I will always condone piracy, why I own so many DVDs and VHS tapes, and why my philosophy is that you should watch whatever movies you can, while you can. So far I’ve only covered American and British silent film productions, but this week, I wanted to branch out even further and explore some more international silent films—where the history is just as rich, and the creativity and innovation is even more astounding. Both of tonight’s films may be silent, but their power is palpable, their messaging is salient, and though one film’s history is almost a complete mystery, they both have made a significant impact upon film lovers everywhere.

Let’s begin with the more mysterious of the two, from Japan, this is Teinosuke Kinugasa’s 1926 experimental silent film: A Page of Madness. This was a production crafted by a group of Japanese avant-garde artists, known as Shinkankakuha (aka “School of new perceptions”) and is considered the first film of a stillborn “neo-sensationist” current, though its connection to German expressionism is undeniable. This film had a very limited release in Japan in the 20s, then was lost for 45 years until director Kinugasa rediscovered it in his storehouse in 1971. And given how chilling and puzzling A Page of Madness is to experience, I can’t help wondering if this film was kept hidden on purpose. Even the opening credits are evocative, as the names are revealed through the turning of pages in a book. We are then transported to a jail-like building that is being pummeled by a thunderstorm. It’s a dark and stormy night, and we witness a woman within a confined cell, dancing brilliantly, tirelessly, madly, until her feet bleed, to no music, but the silent but stark crashing of thunder and lightning. There are several women and men locked up in this place, all of whom seem numb, disturbed, and tormented for a litany of reasons. We are then introduced to our main(?) character, an unnamed elderly man who has taken a job as a custodian at the mental hospital where his wife resides. He gazes lovingly at his wife through the bars of her cell, saying unknown sweet things to her, though she no longer recognizes who he is. After years away at sea as a sailor, his wife became mentally unwell, resulting in her imprisonment in this sterile, lonely hospital. And though she seemingly has no idea who he is, the man seems to take comfort in his proximity to his wife. The next day, his daughter comes by the hospital to announce her engagement, but this joyous declaration turns sour quickly, as the daughter is furious at what her father is doing. Resolute in his choices, the man remains employed there, still keeping his connection to this patient a secret. We observe the patients outside, receiving some barebones form of enrichment, only for their excitement surrounding the dancing patient to result in a frenetic frenzy of flailing and hectic hubbub. After this chaos comes a brief moment of peace, where the man shares a small meal with his wife, and he dreams of winning the lottery and giving the money to their daughter. Soon after, though, the man finally attempts to carry out his plan of breaking his wife out of the asylum, which only results in further disorientation and danger. A Page of Madness does not feature any intertitles, which are crucial to all silent films, but even if it did include text with dialogue, I’m not sure if this film would’ve been any more coherent. It is extremely, intentionally, surreal and avant-garde, with narrative and cinematographic absurdities that are unconcerned with being tethered to reality. The visuals for this film, for lack of better words, are trippy as hell. There are effects achieved here that I’ve never seen in a film this old—overlapping film that places scenes on top of scenes, cacophonous non-musical sounds that sounded incredibly modern, quick cuts and nightmarish editing that made it difficult to discern what was reality and what was a waking nightmare. Even though there was zero dialogue to be heard or read, the emotions expressed by the performers got the story across—as did reading the very helpful Wikipedia page about it. According to TCM’s Jacqueline Stewart, “When the film was originally shown in Japan, it was accompanied by live narration. During the silent era, Japanese performers called ‘Benshi’ would be on hand at a screening to fill in gaps in the story, provide background details, and elaborate on the thoughts and feelings of the characters”—which makes me feel better about my own viewing experience, which included my sister reading aloud about the film as we watched it. Yasunari Kawabata, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, was credited on the film for writing the original story, but the entire production is now considered a collaboration between him, Kinugasa, Banko Sawada, and Minoru Inuzuka. Kinugasa went on to make several more films, the majority of which were seemingly more successful and feature an easier-to-follow story, but there’s something so bizarrely intriguing and compellingly freaky about A Page of Madness. Its unique editing, claustrophobic production design, and unsettling use of noh masks is just so effectively scary—without any tangible script or jump scares necessary. This film’s history is so unknown, essentially all I could find fun-fact-wise in my research is the fact that it took about a month to film (which was considered a long time then), and the fact that Kinugasa had only eight small lights to work with, so he arranged the walls of his small studio to be painted in a silver color in order to make them reflect additional illumination. Confusion and tragedy aside, I really enjoyed A Page of Madness, and felt genuinely unsettled by its vibrant horror.

Similarly horrific, though it is certainly not classified as such, was tonight’s next film—the more famous and better-documented of tonight’s two films: from France, this is Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 film The Passion of Joan of Arc. Even in my humble beginnings as a film critic, I often heard about the timeless, iconic, oft-referenced beauty of this film, but as with many silent films, I was in no rush to watch it. But then I read Charli XCX’s glowing review of it on Letterboxd and I thought, wait, can tragic French historical silent cinema be brat? And it turns out, the answer is yes. Based on the actual record and court minutes of the trial of Joan of Arc, this film depicts the final hours of the legendary martyr and patron saint of France, and the brave resistance she maintained until the brutal end of her bold life. As the film’s opening titles explain, the questions and answers posed in this trial were recorded meticulously, so very little script-structuring was necessary, and through Joan’s own words we are offered a clearer vision of who she really was. We are shown a court of decrepit, stern-looking French clergymen who are loyal to the English, when suddenly Joan (Renée Jeanne Falconetti) enters the frame. Recently captured near Compiègne and eventually brought to Rouen to stand trial on the 30th of May, 1431 for heresy, demonic visions, and committing blasphemy by wearing men’s clothes, Joan stands to face her judges, eyes wide, breathing steady, her war-torn, tear-stained face already telling so much. They ask for her name, to which she responds, “In France they call me ‘Joan’, in my village they call me ‘Joanie’”, and that is the end of the easy questions and the beginning of her torment. They begin to question her fantastical and strongly-held belief that she was sent by god to save France, with one clergyman asking, “You think god hates the English?”, to which she earnestly responds, “I know nothing of god’s hatred for the English or for the French, I only know that all English will be driven out of France soon, except for those who die here.” There is no sound to be heard beyond the booming, operatic score playing over the action, and yet you can feel the intensity rise in the room after this moment. They cross-examine her as if she were on trial for murder, asking for details of her visions, asking why she wears men’s clothes, and demanding to know everything that god has told her or promised her in return for her work. Joan answers each question carefully but honestly, and claims to desire nothing from god beyond her own salvation. She also explains how, despite their demands for answers, god works in mysterious ways and they should learn, as she has, not to question him. All of these big, intimidating, (and, unrelated, but super ugly) men are appalled at her accusation of their heresy, as if they’re aren’t putting a teenager on the stand and deciding her fate in the way that only god can. Though uneducated and illiterate, Joan was savvy and clever during her trial, as witnesses have recounted and this film displays. In one exchange, for example, she was asked if she knew she was in god’s grace. The question was meant as a scholarly trap, as church doctrine held that nobody could be certain of being in god’s grace. If she answered positively, she would have been charged with heresy; if negatively, she would have confessed her own guilt. Joan avoided the trap by stating that if she was not in god’s grace, she hoped god would put her there, and if she was in god’s grace then she hoped she would remain so. Only a few clergymen believe Joan and support her, but the vast majority want her dead—not just because of her perceived heresy, but because of her clear impact upon the French people. The judges are cruel and strange to Joan, perhaps torturing her more easily due to her male drag presentation. They mock her, curse at her, spit on her, and threaten a violent death if she does not admit to her guilt, and yet Joan remains strong, steadfast in her faith, kept alive by her belief in a kinder, more clearheaded god than these men can imagine. One of the most memorable scenes to this critic, is when Joan is being held in the torture chamber, cries of fear escaping her mouth, when the camera cuts to just outside the church to the town square, where a carnival of contortionists and magicians are performing. Whether this was just a fun stylistic detail or a clear narrative choice, Dreyer presents an uncomfortable but interesting juxtaposition here. When Joan is placed upon the pyre, and asked what victory could possibly be achieved now, she responds, “My martyrdom”—a powerful, foresighted answer that gave me goosebumps, 98 years after this film was released, and 595 years after Joan herself said it. After the success of Master of the House in Denmark, Dreyer was invited to make a film in France by the Société Gėnėrale des Films, and proposed a film about Marie Antoinette, Catherine de Medici, or Joan of Arc. He claimed that the final decision on the film’s subject was determined by drawing matches, but Joan of Arc was in the news after World War I—having been canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church in 1920—so she was as relevant a topic as ever. Though I resisted it for a long time, I was absolutely blown away by The Passion of Joan of Arc, and if I had known this was a court drama, I would’ve watched it way earlier! I’ll be honest, I was worried that you pretentious fuckers had overhyped this film, but it was surprisingly riveting, and Falconetti’s famous performance as Joan deserves every bit of praise. How she was able to move and contort and relax and adjust her face is nothing short of stunning, haunting, and spellbinding. How she was able to control the pools of tears in her eyes, only releasing them at the right moments, is beyond impressive. Her expressions of pain and passion, laser-focused upon by Dreyer’s close-up shots, took my breath away every time. Unfortunately, Dreyer was an absolute terror to work with, and apparently made Falconetti’s life hell while they filmed it. He constructed an elaborate, expensive, expansive set modeled after the Rouen prison, but his careful consideration of his set seemingly stopped there. This film’s legacy and classic-status is well-known and well-agreed-upon: the Village Voice ranked it the 8th greatest film of the 20th century, it was included on the list of the Top 100 Essential Films of All Time by the National Society of Film Critics, it was ranked 64th on the list of “100 Greatest Films” by the prominent French magazine Cahiers du cinéma, it appeared on Sight & Sound magazine’s top ten films poll five times, it ranked 37th on the Director’s List in 2012 and was listed by such filmmakers as Manoel de Oliveira, Atom Egoyan, Tsai Ming-Liang, Walter Salles, Béla Tarr, and Michael Mann, who called it, “Human experience conveyed purely from the visualization of the human face: no one else has composed and realized human beings quite like Dreyer in The Passion of Joan of Arc.” It was even included by the Vatican in a list of important films compiled in 1995, under the category of “Religion.” I find it endlessly fascinating that a film about the beloved, respected, world-renowned saint Joan would be just as beloved, respected, and world-renowned, and I, personally, attribute that success to the real Joan of Arc, and the insanely talented actress who played her here. Once again, I kinda dreaded this week of silent films, and once again, I was very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed them, despite my frustratingly-modern tastes. There may have been no words spoken in either of these films but I’ve said enough tonight to make up for that, so I’ll shut up now. Until next time, vive la France!